Adding an achievement system to the Epic Games Store has existed on its roadmap for quite some time. Now, nearly a year after the storefront went online, achievements are being added, with a catch.
According to the CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeny, the feature is still in a very early stage and that only certain games will feature them. As it stands, only Ark: Survival Evolved can partake in the new achievement system. Though that will be expanded with other games in the future.
Certain games on the Epic Games Store may begin to display achievements as you unlock them.
This is an early version of the feature and you can expect to see changes & adjustments.
We'll have more info to share on achievements in the future, so stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/80dnoLYegV
— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) July 29, 2020
Now, I haven’t been the biggest fan of the Epic Game Store, but I do acknowledge for what it is. And I’ll be honest, I do like free games so I use the storefront for that and other games I can’t get elsewhere. However, when it comes to achievements, I don’t see them as a big deal. As such I never cared for them no matter what digital store or platform they appeared on; Xbox and Steam’s achievements or PlayStation trophies. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the appeal of them and why people hold them to such high regard, it’s just not a big get for me.
The bigger question here is are the developers who currently have games on the Epic Games Store going to wait to go back add achievements to their games. Or will this be something that Epic Games is taken on by themselves? The latter doesn’t seem possible as the developers would need to either emulate what they included in Steam (if that game is on Steam) or add them from scratch.
For me, getting a proper shopping cart for the Epic Game Store would have been something I’d focused on first. Which is an item on the roadmap that still is listed under “Future Development”. Sure that would have made more sense for a store to have a way for people to purchase multiple items at once. Here’s to hoping that feature is enabled sometime in the next year.